Last Day of the Month

Don't have much time to write, but thought you might like a photo of my new phone.

Have fun with what little is left of February!

Still Hangin' in There

The earache hung on for all of Wednesday, got a bit better yesterday and is back again today.

But I did get out and get my new phone.

The old one was doing fun things like: a half hour after I ended a call, it would make a little alert noise and inform me that it had just ended the call. That's happened five or six times. And it leaves me wondering if I used up 2.5 to 3 hours of minutes that I didn't actually use. I don't know.

So, I got a new T-Mobile G1. It's got some wonderful features that make it easier to use than my old Sidekick 3, but some features that leave me wishing for the Sidekick. I was able to transfer all my phone numbers to the contact list on Google, and it uploaded them to the G1 in about a second after the service was connected and I'd switched the SIM card to the new phone. 

It also uploaded my calendar from Google, which means that almost all the work of setting up a new phone was done before I even started. And the good thing about the calendar is that it opens to the month view every time (because I set it to do that), unlike my Sidekick which would give me a note that said "No upcoming events in the next 7 days" instead of letting me see a calendar.

Switching the SIM card was not as easy as it might have been. You need to apply an excessive amount of force to remove the back the first time, which you need to do to switch the card. I called Holly to see how to remove it, and she assured me that I was doing the right thing, I just needed to be a bit more assertive.

It has some great features, though.

It can pinpoint where you are and give you directions from your present location to any address you care to type in. Well, it does if you're in a 3G area. They put in a 3G network in DC, and continued it out into the suburbs to just about 3 miles short of where I live. It still works fine as a phone, and does very well with the internet, but I know from using Holly's phone that it does even better on a 3G network. Once it knows where you are, it can give you a local map or a satellite photo of the place you are, which can be useful if you're looking for a place that's nearby and can't figure out how to get there.

It has a free application that will let you take a photo of a barcode on an item in a store, and tell you how much it is, plus let you know the prices of the same item in nearby stores and online.

I downloaded a free application that will let me record a sound and make it into a ringtone. I can't wait to make my phone sound like the middlewatch from The Middleman! If you liked that link, search for "Middleman" on YouTube.

One of the things I don't like about it is that I can't pair it with my bluetooth headset. Holly's had hers now for at least 4 months, and she still can't get her bluetooth headset to communicate with it. She said it found and started talking to her computer almost instantly, but there's nothing the two of them can do together. 

She'd much rather have it talk to the headset. 

So would I.  

The instructions in the manual (and online) just don't work. I'm going to have to call them and ask them how to do it.

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There's a new Ghost Whisperer on tonight, and, of course, a new Dollhouse. SciFi will be showing a rerun of Moonlight, always worth watching, as well as Battlestar Galactica.

TNT will be showing The Lord of the Rings trilogy over the weekend, starting tonight with The Fellowship of the Ring, followed tomorrow night by The Two Towers, and finishing Sunday evening with The Return of the King. If you're busy on Friday or Saturday evenings, you can catch the whole trilogy on Sunday, starting late in the morning.

Have a  great weekend!

Earache!

I want to do lots of things today, but I'm being really distracted by my ear.

Yes, the one that is capable of hearing, but is all clogged up so that I can't hear anything out of it at all. It's so clogged today that it hurts. 

Well, actually, it pretty much always hurts (since 1973), but it hurts way more than usual. 

Enough that, although I'm not in unbearable pain, it's annoying and distracting, and is driving me to tears. It's causing strange sensations that seem to be acting on nerves somewhere in the area and making tears reflexively appear. Or maybe it's just pressure in the wrong places.

It's driving me crazy.

Crazy enough that I want to find a plunger, put it over my ear and press it in and out to make my ear unclog. Crazy enough that I'm starting to think about long, thin, sharp objects to put in my ear to puncture the eardrum and make it stop! Yes, I know that doing that would hurt a lot. But maybe it would relieve the pressure inside my ear and make it less annoying. Yes, I know that it would destroy my hearing, but I can't hear anything out of that ear anyway, even though my ear (the inside part) can still hear just fine. Yes, I've seen at least 15 doctors about this, and the last one of them (an ENT specialist) informed me that there's nothing wrong with my ear, and then asked me why I couldn't hear out of it!

All the things I planned to do today are getting shoved aside while I do everything I can think of to make it stop. It's bad enough I can't hear out of it, it's bad enough that I have ringing and other noises in my ears, but why does it have to hurt, too? And worse yet, why do doctors treat me as if I'm an idiot and imagining the problem?

No, I know the answer to that last question. Doctors (with a few exceptions) don't care!  They know you have to pay them anyway, even if they don't bother to do anything for you, and they just plain don't care! They don't care if they cause harm or even kill you, as long as they get paid and you don't sue.

A list of things that doctors have told me or someone I know was their imaginations includes (but is not limited to:

* Sinus Infection

* Really bad allergies

* Cancer (this includes a tumor the size of a watermelon!)

* Adhesions

* Leukemia

* Labor(!)

* And more

I wish you a better day than I'm having, and enjoy Lost tonight!

Leverage!

TNT has turned itself into the Leverage channel for the day!

Tonight is the grand finale of the season for Leverage, and they're showing all the shows that lead up to that, unfortunately, not in order.

Do check it out if you have the chance!

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That's pretty much it for today for this blog because of some big news.

I intend to start a new blog today.

I may have mentioned that after looking up the Great Depression, I discovered that the things that happened during the Great Depression are happening now (except for the dust bowl, thank heaven!).

Well, after a long string of really bad service, I discovered Comcast is ripping me off, and I'm really angry about it! I should say here that it may be the result of a company that is mismanaged and totally inept. The abysmal quality of service would tend to support that theory.

But the bottom line is that, deliberate or not, they're ripping off about $50 or $60 from a 65 year old woman who's on Social Security. 

And you can bet that if they're doing it to me, they're doing it to others.

The new blog will be about the depressing stuff like this. I hope to let you know about rip-offs that affect how much money you have to spend at the grocery store, but also what to do about them, who to contact, and how to get help, not to mention the more upbeat ways that you can save money on essentials and lead a better life.

I don't know much about all this yet, but we'll learn together, and if we stick together, maybe we can help end this as soon as possible.

So, tomorrow I'll have information about my new blog and how you, too, can read it.

Have a great day, and a better day tomorrow! 

I intend to!

Steve Canyon Front Cover Announced!

John announced the front cover of the new Steve Canyon  Volume 2 DVD! We've been working on it, and finally got to a point where we agreed that it was done.

The back cover is also finalized except for some possible last-minute changes in the wording of some of the text, and the disk labels are almost done. Well, except for the front cover, it's all almost done.

John has been working so hard on this. I will be really happy when my part is done so at least that part of it will be out of his hair.

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I've been working hard on the first sock from the yarn I bought at JoAnn Fabrics. The heel flap is done, the heel is turned, and I've picked up the stitches for the gusset.

I actually got further than that last night, but then noticed the sock had a hole in it. I must've missed knitting the last stitch on the heel flap, and it started to unravel, thereby freeing all the stitches that had been picked up for the gusset. 

Usually, if you drop a stitch, you can just latch it up, but it was a column of stitches that had the gusset fastened to them, and the whole sock was unraveling! So, I knitted a whole lot last night, and then had to frog almost the whole heel and start over again.

I'm still very ambivalent about the colors in this, but I have to say it looks very Spring-like. And I have so few socks that I'll be wearing them even if I don't like them. I don't really dislike them, but I haven't gotten to a point where I like them.

The sock pattern is wonderful, though, and I'll write it up and post it here soon. It's a very plain sock pattern, but really makes comfortable socks. If your goal is comfortable socks, this is the pattern you want.

Have a great evening and enjoy Chuck, Heroes and Medium!

Loot from the New JoAnn Store!

Here's what I bought at the new JoAnn store:

Doesn't look like much, does it?

Well there are some mother-of-pearl star-shaped buttons that aren't in the photo, too. I bought some cross stitch bobbins, which are great for winding the tail when you cast on. How many times have you cast on something, started knitting, and halfway through the first row discovered that you're knitting with the tail from the cast on instead of the working yarn? Well, this stops that.

There are some really nice point protectors, and grips for steel (and larger) crochet hooks, and some interesting sock yarn. I've started the first sock and am just starting the heel flap, so there will be a photo of that soon. I haven't made up my mind if I really like this sock yarn. My liking or not liking seems to be dependent on the color.  I'm still making up my mind.

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We're winding down to the end on the Steve Canyon DVD covers, and it's starting to look good. I can't wait to be finished with this. John and I discussed some really exciting ideas for the DVD labels for the last volume (the one after the one we're working on, which is volume 2). The front cover for this was a lot of work because the copy of the photo used for it was badly scratched, and had lots of dust, dirt and debris on it, so there was a lot to fix even before I could do something about adding color. It looks like it was worth it though. 

I'll have more information as it unfolds.

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I hope everybody out there had a chance to see Dollhouse on Friday. That episode costarred Matt Keeslar from The Middleman, always a delight to the eye, this time as a psychotic killer out to get Echo. Actually, there was a lot of Psychotic killer in evidence during the episode.

By the way, The Middleman will be out this summer (July) on DVD. They're basing the decision on whether to continue the show on how well the DVD sales go, so go out there this summer and enjoy or discover the delights of this wonderful show! I'll let you know when it's possible to advance order it, but if you can't wait until summer, check it out via comic book!

I caught a really wonderful science fiction suspense/thriller the other night, called Deja Vu, starring Denzel Washington. It had me on the edge of my seat practically from the beginning. It involves technology that is close to real time travel, which usually makes the best or worst stories. In this case, it's the best. The science fiction is nearly as brilliant and the dialogue.

At one point the agent is asking if a woman (who is currently dead) is actually alive in the past. He asks "Is she dead or alive?" The techs shuffle their feet a bit, and he says "I'll make it simple so you folks with PHds can understand it." Then he picks up a chair and smashes a monitor. "That monitor is broken. It's dead. It hasn't 'temporarily transitioned to a different state of entropy.' It's dead! Now, is she dead or alive?"

It's a delight and a real thrill ride!

I hope you had a great weekend and I wish you a wonderful week!